Proposed amendment to the US Constitution pertaining to the number of Representatives in the House
This article is part of a series on the
Constitution of the United States
Preamble and Articles
Preamble
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
Amendments to the Constitution
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
Unratified Amendments:
Congressional Apportionment
Titles of Nobility
Corwin
Child Labor
Equal Rights
D.C. Voting Rights
History
Drafting and ratification timeline
Convention
Signing
Federalism
Republicanism
Bill of Rights
Reconstruction Amendments
Full text
Preamble and Articles I–VII
Amendments I–X
Amendments XI–XXVII
Unratified Amendments
United States portal
Law portal
Politics portal
v
t
e
The Congressional Apportionment Amendment (originally titled Article the First) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that addresses the number of seats in the House of Representatives. It was proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, but was never ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures. As Congress did not set a time limit for its ratification, the Congressional Apportionment Amendment is still pending before the states. As of 2024, it is one of six unratified amendments.
In the 1st United States Congress, James Madison put together a package of constitutional amendments designed to address the concerns of Anti-Federalists, who were suspicious of federal power under the new constitution. The Congressional Apportionment Amendment is the only one of the twelve amendments passed by Congress which was never ratified; ten amendments were ratified by 1791 as the Bill of Rights, while the other amendment (Article the Second) was later ratified as the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992. A majority of the states did ratify the Congressional Apportion Amendment and, by the end of 1791, the amendment was just one state short of adoption. However, no state has ratified the amendment since 1792.
The amendment lays out a mathematical formula for determining the number of seats in the House of Representatives. It would initially have required one representative for every 30,000 constituents, with that number eventually climbing to one representative for every 50,000 constituents. However, there is some agreement that the last line contains a scrivener's error[1] (see Mathematical discrepancies). As the amendment was never passed, Congress has set the size of the House of Representatives by statute. Congress regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth throughout the 19th century until it fixed the number of voting House members at 435 in 1911, where aside from a temporary increase to 437 members from 1959 through 1962 after Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union, it has remained.
The 2020 United States Census recorded a population of 331.4 million; consequently, the minimum number of representatives in the House could have grown to about 6,600 under the terms of the original House version of this amendment, which did not contain the scrivener's error.[2][3]
^Trende, Sean. "It's Time To Increase The Size of the House – Sabato's Crystal Ball". Retrieved 2020-11-07.
^Stone, Lyman (October 17, 2018). "Pack the House: How to Fix the Legislative Branch". Mere Orthodoxy. Retrieved September 17, 2019.
^Matthews, Dylan (June 4, 2018). "The case for massively expanding the US House of Representatives, in one chart". Vox. Retrieved September 17, 2019.
and 25 Related for: Congressional Apportionment Amendment information
The CongressionalApportionmentAmendment (originally titled Article the First) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that addresses...
first amendment proposed to the U.S. Constitution. The CongressionalApportionmentAmendment was originally proposed as the first of twelve amendments to...
Historically, most died in the congressional committees to which they were assigned. Since 1999, only about 20 proposed amendments have received a vote by either...
Anti-Federalists, in contrast, were now opposed, realizing that Congressional approval of these amendments would greatly lessen the chances of a second constitutional...
The Sixteenth Amendment (Amendment XVI) to the United States Constitution allows Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states...
Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Usually considered...
[clarification needed] United States congressionalapportionmentCongressionalApportionmentAmendment Redistricting Apportionment Act of 1911, Pub. L.Tooltip...
serve the remainder of their terms after an election. The amendment established congressional terms to begin before presidential terms and that the incoming...
earlier Apportionment Acts, the 1929 Act neither repealed nor restated the requirements of the previous apportionment acts that congressional districts...
typically propose around 200 amendments during each two-year term of Congress. Most, however, never get out of the Congressional committees in which they...
United States congressionalapportionment is the process by which seats in the United States House of Representatives are distributed among the 50 states...
that it does very little. While "Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment reduces congressional representation for states that deny suffrage on racial grounds...
In 2023, the Congressional Caucus for the Equal Rights Amendment was founded by House Democrats. The resolution, "Proposing an amendment to the Constitution...
regarding the Citizenship (Amendment) Act Clean Air Act, United States law to reduce air pollution CongressionalApportionmentAmendment, unratified pending...
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime...
kept free and pure by congressional enactment whenever necessary. In the twentieth century, the Court began to interpret the amendment more broadly, striking...
and Rhode Island ratified eleven of the amendments, though all three rejected the amendment on Congressional pay raises. Virginia initially postponed...
within each congressional district). The amendment did not pass. The amendment appeared on the ballot as follows: Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado...
The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and...
Amendment (Amendment XVII) to the United States Constitution established the direct election of United States senators in each state. The amendment supersedes...
The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to...
legislature, equal in number to its congressional delegation (representatives and senators) totaling 535 electors. A 1961 amendment granted the federal District...
unratified amendments became part of the Constitution in 1992 as the Twenty-seventh Amendment. The other unratified amendment, known as the Congressional Apportionment...